This is perfect. Especially the fact that 1) it never ends, and 2) you eventually figure out that the best way to get a promotion is not to be faster of more efficient but the exact opposite - delay ending the current task, and keep making it larger, until the next one comes along. Beautiful.
Love this. Thank you. I'm eating lunch at the moment, by myself, in a local casual establishment, so of course I pulled out my phone and the first thing I looked at was HN and this was the top post. I started playing and couldn't help smiling. Felt like I was watching a robot mimicking me as it was studying human behavior.
It also got me thinking about what I would do before smart phones. During the dumb phone era I was still pulling out my phone to text a lot so wasn't too different, but I also read books a lot more back then
Knowing I would be out alone for a meal, I would have carried reading material- book, magazine, paper articles. Maybe a notebook to scribble notes.
Now, I have an internet of reading material via my phone. Or my tablet.
My family and I are close. We talk lots and often and tend to have enough context when a sentence or two needs speaking. We go out together, we chat a bit at the start of a meal, and we don’t need to speak much afterwards. We don’t get awkward, we can be quiet. But my brain continues - write a note, surface-level research on an idea … so we each look at a device for a few minutes. My daughter is keeping in touch with her significant other, my wife is likely gaming or maybe window shopping. If anyone speaks up, we pull away from the devices to talk.
I’m personally not addicted to the device itself. But I’m like Johnny 5 - my intellectual curiosity is difficult to satiate. The readily available access to “input” is what keeps me plugged in.
Back on topic: these art projects, or statements, or whatever that are designed to bring attention to our attention to our phones … interesting, fun, perhaps important. But I’m not a fan of the social nostalgia that sometimes appears in the comments. I never did just interact with strangers. Never had a meaningful conversation with a random person. I would have had my face in a book.
Actually, having a simple and straightforward instruction that you need to ignore and do something totally different instead... kind of sums up the modern computer UI.
The worst part about this is that I immediately thought that it would be useful in awkward transitory moments. Everybody pulls out their phone on the bus, so you could fit in pretty well with this instead of staring outside.
What’s wrong with looking outside? I’m at the point where I treat my phone like it’s radioactive, actively trying to limit each encounter with it. I think we should all be staring out the window more often.
The way the buses are laid out in my city is that the seats are directly facing each other. So staring outside could make it seem like your staring at people if it’s too crowded. So it’s more comfortable to pretend to use your phone.
That’s kind of the weird trap, isn’t it? That it feels like there’s normative social pressure to do your phone too, right at the moment that everyone who would notice you doing or not doing so has turned their attention elsewhere?
One of my hobbies when visiting London is smiling whilst taking the Tube somewhere. Oftentimes I am the only person in the carriage not wearing a glum or flat expression.
This is actually perfect for AI robots to blend in waiting in public. Just like bartenders polishing glasses, you can't have them just staring making people uncomfortable.
We need this on a device which is not a phone. It could be a simple mechanical device which presents the instructions on a slowly scrolling paper tape.
This was not a realistic simulation of my usage. My primary glassface activity is reading books. So it should be a continuous slow scroll with infrequent access of a burger menu. Fortunately I can simulate this by reading a book.
Being non-present on a screen reminds of meditation but is more akin to dissociation and is really dreaming awake. It takes you away but you dream a weird dream which is not yours .
Well, I used the opportunity to be present. I was being a bit facetious about being tricked into it; it's a state I like to enter instead of being on a screen to begin with.
I'm getting a novel optical illusion with the spinning line in the box that shows up near the beginning: Whichever end I'm looking at looks normal, but the other end looks like a split hair, or an open pair of chopsticks. Like what's spinning isn't actually a "/" but actually a very narrow "V" .. only, if I try to look at the split part of the V, that part closes up and the opposite end splits.
Elite Beat Agents changed my life and how I perceive music. What an amazing game. If you didn’t cry when doing the You’re the Inspiration level, you have no soul.
Yeah. I was so sad they nobody ever made a bigger better version for the WiiU.
Wish I could emulate it on my phone with S-Pen too but audio latency killed it last time I checked.
I have been meaning to get a drawing tablet and try Osu, and I will, but the songs in it are unknown Japanese anime stuff and don't appeal to me so it's not quite the same.
Ohhhh, this felt so familiar. Listening to music while mindlessly scrolling and waiting for... something. Yikes. I really don't think I like technology any more.
Love it, very creative counterattack on the attention wars.
I remember decades ago, first phones came out, and I was at a party and I had not much to do, so I took out my phone and pretended to send messages with someone. It felt weird, but now it would be such a "natural" thing to do when bored.
A great addition to this would be if everything was synched from a central server.
20 commuters pressing their toes down and letting out a sigh at the same time.
It would be like a multiplayer protest against attention-grabbing phones. Everybody playing the game would know if someone else was playing the game, but no one else.
It may defeat the original purpose of the game to blend in, but I think it could be pretty fun to observe something like that.
I think it's sad that we've created a society that feels social pressure to stare at a screen when they find themselves somewhere without something to say to someone else. This explains why social skills are on the decline.
Is it a social pressure to stare at a screen or to just pretend to be occupied with something else? Would reading a few pages of a book, for instance, satisfy this social pressure?
I do agree more generally that smartphones are borderline essential for many social expectations, though. I personally find smartphones really distracting, being a device that allows for instant information at merely the hint of boredom, and if they were less socially enforced I probably wouldn’t have one.
From the same creator (so funny):
https://pippinbarr.com/itisasifyouweremakinglove/
This is excellent I loved this so much. I cant stop laughing.
Hilarious!
Related by the same creator https://pippinbarr.com/itisasifyouweredoingwork/
More accessible on desktop.
This is perfect. Especially the fact that 1) it never ends, and 2) you eventually figure out that the best way to get a promotion is not to be faster of more efficient but the exact opposite - delay ending the current task, and keep making it larger, until the next one comes along. Beautiful.
The sounds made me feel like I live 1998 again. Surreal.
Just like a normal day in the office
The stuff of nightmares.
Thanks, I hate this
Ok good, but I don't browse the web on my fone. Thank you for posting this
Wow, I hated this experience within seconds. So I think it achieved its artistic aims.
Heh, I loved it within seconds. So relaxing while also so darkly funny. Everyone is a bit different I guess. I sent it to some of my art-biz friends.
> So relaxing while also so darkly funny
it has that early internet screamer vibes, I was a bundle of nerves all the time.
Love this. Thank you. I'm eating lunch at the moment, by myself, in a local casual establishment, so of course I pulled out my phone and the first thing I looked at was HN and this was the top post. I started playing and couldn't help smiling. Felt like I was watching a robot mimicking me as it was studying human behavior.
It also got me thinking about what I would do before smart phones. During the dumb phone era I was still pulling out my phone to text a lot so wasn't too different, but I also read books a lot more back then
Knowing I would be out alone for a meal, I would have carried reading material- book, magazine, paper articles. Maybe a notebook to scribble notes.
Now, I have an internet of reading material via my phone. Or my tablet.
My family and I are close. We talk lots and often and tend to have enough context when a sentence or two needs speaking. We go out together, we chat a bit at the start of a meal, and we don’t need to speak much afterwards. We don’t get awkward, we can be quiet. But my brain continues - write a note, surface-level research on an idea … so we each look at a device for a few minutes. My daughter is keeping in touch with her significant other, my wife is likely gaming or maybe window shopping. If anyone speaks up, we pull away from the devices to talk.
I’m personally not addicted to the device itself. But I’m like Johnny 5 - my intellectual curiosity is difficult to satiate. The readily available access to “input” is what keeps me plugged in.
Back on topic: these art projects, or statements, or whatever that are designed to bring attention to our attention to our phones … interesting, fun, perhaps important. But I’m not a fan of the social nostalgia that sometimes appears in the comments. I never did just interact with strangers. Never had a meaningful conversation with a random person. I would have had my face in a book.
In 2025, my phone is my book.
Agreed. This is amazing. Really awesome aha moment when you realize what’s going on.
I’m going to start reading physical books again.
Thank you.
I love that it tells me when to scratch my ear. I am always confused about when I should be doing that. 11/10
Is that the phone analog of your nose suddenly feeling itchy when playing music?
"Swipe right" doesn't do anything for me (Fennec on Android).
You press Play Online to play. Swipe Right is just a (confusing) image on the page.
Swiping right on that image should definitely start the game.
Actually, having a simple and straightforward instruction that you need to ignore and do something totally different instead... kind of sums up the modern computer UI.
For me, it just drags the image elsewhere.
Yes, by "should" they mean "the site author should have made it work that way."
Ahh, I see.
Goes to show; you can check every box and try so hard, but still fail and lose lots of people on screen 1.
The trick is to not have screen 1.
I tried swiping right 10 times like an idiot, thinking I didn’t swipe fast enough or something
I tried swiping a bunch, figured it must not work in Firefox for Android, tried in Chrome only to find out it didn't swipe there, either.
Same. Firefox iOS
that's a screenshot, you have to click on the link to play
is this supposed to work on desktop?
Yes, this is a multiplatform game/art experience.
Technically yes but absolutely not.
The worst part about this is that I immediately thought that it would be useful in awkward transitory moments. Everybody pulls out their phone on the bus, so you could fit in pretty well with this instead of staring outside.
What’s wrong with looking outside? I’m at the point where I treat my phone like it’s radioactive, actively trying to limit each encounter with it. I think we should all be staring out the window more often.
The way the buses are laid out in my city is that the seats are directly facing each other. So staring outside could make it seem like your staring at people if it’s too crowded. So it’s more comfortable to pretend to use your phone.
You can simply scroll and tap a black locked screen. No one’s going to ask anyway.
That’s kind of the weird trap, isn’t it? That it feels like there’s normative social pressure to do your phone too, right at the moment that everyone who would notice you doing or not doing so has turned their attention elsewhere?
One of my hobbies when visiting London is smiling whilst taking the Tube somewhere. Oftentimes I am the only person in the carriage not wearing a glum or flat expression.
Just yell instead.
What's so awkward about that?
Do you also tip just because there's a line behind you and the self-service cashier tells you the machine "is going to ask you a question"?
This is actually perfect for AI robots to blend in waiting in public. Just like bartenders polishing glasses, you can't have them just staring making people uncomfortable.
We need this on a device which is not a phone. It could be a simple mechanical device which presents the instructions on a slowly scrolling paper tape.
It is good to be able to catch yourself or see yourself from another perspective. I liked it.
I wonder about the dopamine effect, could it be made even more boring?
This was not a realistic simulation of my usage. My primary glassface activity is reading books. So it should be a continuous slow scroll with infrequent access of a burger menu. Fortunately I can simulate this by reading a book.
You tricked me into meditating. Thanks, I love it.
I also found this weirdly meditative!
Almost made me worry: how much of a phone addict am I when I find this meditative?
Being non-present on a screen reminds of meditation but is more akin to dissociation and is really dreaming awake. It takes you away but you dream a weird dream which is not yours .
If it was dreaming awake, it wouldn't be trivial to stop using this.
Well, I used the opportunity to be present. I was being a bit facetious about being tricked into it; it's a state I like to enter instead of being on a screen to begin with.
I like this concept! Although it doesn’t accurately reflect how I normally use my phone.
Maybe monitoring someone using e.g. some social media app and recording all taps and swipes might make it more realistic :)
Maybe also some directions like “now smile” or “now look awkwardly at someone in your environment like you’re hiding something”.
Did the creator of the site just update it? Because it definitely has instructions like that now: it told me to narrow my eyes and grimace!
I'm getting a novel optical illusion with the spinning line in the box that shows up near the beginning: Whichever end I'm looking at looks normal, but the other end looks like a split hair, or an open pair of chopsticks. Like what's spinning isn't actually a "/" but actually a very narrow "V" .. only, if I try to look at the split part of the V, that part closes up and the opposite end splits.
Is anyone else getting that?
Make this 10x faster, add music, and you have Elite Beat Agents, genuinely one of the best games on the DS.
Elite Beat Agents changed my life and how I perceive music. What an amazing game. If you didn’t cry when doing the You’re the Inspiration level, you have no soul.
Yeah. I was so sad they nobody ever made a bigger better version for the WiiU.
Wish I could emulate it on my phone with S-Pen too but audio latency killed it last time I checked.
I have been meaning to get a drawing tablet and try Osu, and I will, but the songs in it are unknown Japanese anime stuff and don't appeal to me so it's not quite the same.
Ohhhh, this felt so familiar. Listening to music while mindlessly scrolling and waiting for... something. Yikes. I really don't think I like technology any more.
Love it, very creative counterattack on the attention wars.
I remember decades ago, first phones came out, and I was at a party and I had not much to do, so I took out my phone and pretended to send messages with someone. It felt weird, but now it would be such a "natural" thing to do when bored.
This is perfect for when I'm awkwardly walking past the huzz and need to seem like I'm busy on my phone.
never fail to impress the huzz
It's incredible how pointless it seems when there's no wall of content in front of us. Great commentary.
I hated this. Thank you.
"Jiggle one leg". This is hilarious and very well done.
Love this. It’s the Zen TV Experiment for the 21st Century. https://adam.nz/zen-tv-experiment
Repetitive and boring.
> Follow the prompts and be free.
Which is it?
Found that painful, only got a 3 in
Interesting
How irreverent and at the same time non-committal. Just right. Instant hit.
Become an instant hit in your Internet subculture with this one weird trick.
I want to get caught using this next time I'm at lunch.
Why are so many people suffering mental illness?
It's not funny, it's stupid, and sad.
If you find that "you're feeling intense pressure to be on your phone", throw it in the ocean!
The problem is you can’t just tell people throw their phone away. You have to tell them what to do instead.
Otherwise? They’ll just open their phone again and scroll Reddit or Hackernews.
hee-larious:)
A great addition to this would be if everything was synched from a central server. 20 commuters pressing their toes down and letting out a sigh at the same time. It would be like a multiplayer protest against attention-grabbing phones. Everybody playing the game would know if someone else was playing the game, but no one else. It may defeat the original purpose of the game to blend in, but I think it could be pretty fun to observe something like that.
No idea why this was downvoted; I love your idea. After all, what are social activities but doing things, and sometimes pointless things, together?
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I think it's sad that we've created a society that feels social pressure to stare at a screen when they find themselves somewhere without something to say to someone else. This explains why social skills are on the decline.
Is it a social pressure to stare at a screen or to just pretend to be occupied with something else? Would reading a few pages of a book, for instance, satisfy this social pressure? I do agree more generally that smartphones are borderline essential for many social expectations, though. I personally find smartphones really distracting, being a device that allows for instant information at merely the hint of boredom, and if they were less socially enforced I probably wouldn’t have one.